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SETUP MOD
E
The compressor and expander have almost identical controls. These are:
BAND Selects the frequency band.
THRESHOLD Sets the level at which the processors have an effect. The results are
different for the compressor and the expander. For the compressor, the
threshold sets the level at which compression takes place. Signals above
the threshold will be compressed but signals below this level pass
through the compressor unaffected. For the expander, the logic is the
other way round - signals above the threshold are not affected but sig
-
nals below the threshold are brought up in level according to the set-
tings of the controls below. By using the two together, it is possible to
create a 'compander' - i.e. signals above the threshold are reduced in
level (compressor) and signals below the threshold are brought up in
level (expander) as this simple example demonstrates:
The incoming signal level has a huge dynamic range going from very
loud to very quiet. By setting the compressor and expander thresholds
to the same value, the output of the processor will be the signal shown
with the dashed line - as you can see, its dynamic range is now much
more even. However, because the loud signal is now reduced in level
quite dramatically, the overall signal level can be pushed up (shown
with the otted line). This gives the effect of the whole thing sounding a
lot 'louder' or 'bigger' and the fact that you can control each frequency
band separately gives you a great deal of control.
However, because you have completely separate control of the com-
pressor and the expander's threshold, it is possible to set the processor
so that loud signals are compressed and quiet signals are expanded as
above but it is possible to leave a portion of the signal unaffected by
either compression or expansion:
In this example, the portion of signal between the compressor's thresh-
old and the expander's is unaffected.
v1.6 Operator’s Manual